When I was first stationed in Korea 15 years ago I can remember people both Korean and retired Americans telling stories about how a black soldier was hung by Korean civilians outside of Camp Humphreys for killing a Korean man. I was always skeptical of this claim, but as it turns out there was a grain of truth to the story. I recently decided to research this story to see if I can make a GI Flashbacks article about it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the always informative Popular Gusts blog had already researched this very topic. The site posted an article from the Stars and Stripes that was published in 1971 that explained what caused a race riot to occur in the Anjeong-ri ville just outside of Camp Humphreys:
Korean protesters in Anjeong-ri hold signs after riot occurred in the ville back in 1971. The sign on the left says BLACK, BLACK, BLACK” and “Go back to cotton field,” and the sign on the right looks like it says “We don’t need any N*****”
Black GIs on Rampage
Riot-Torn Anjong-Ni—Why It Happened
By M. SGT. JIM FREELAND and JIM LEA
S&S Korea Bureau
ANJONG-NI, Korea—A sign hangs on the rear wall of the security guard house at the Camp Humphreys main gate which lists the names of 12 bars.
Beside each is a pair of nails from which a small plaque is hung to tell American GIs who are the life’s blood of this village of perhaps 2,000 population, 60 miles south of Seoul, the situation in each bar. A black plaque means the place is on limits; a yellow one means it is off limits.
Since 9:30 p.m. July 10, all the plaques have been yellow. The sign will remain that way for a very long time, Camp Humphreys commander, Col. John C. McWhorter, says.
A few minutes past 9 p.m. that Friday, 50 black soldiers from Camp Humphreys walked into Duffy’s Tavern, one of the plushest of the bars which line a pathway GIs call “the alley,” climbed up on the stage and told everyone to leave the club. In minutes, they had demolished it and moved on to three other clubs which, they say, discriminate against blacks. Those were demolished too. “They didn’t stay around each place very long,” McWhorter said.
“They hit one place, then moved to the next. Some news stories have said there were whites involved, but that is not true. This was between a group of black soldiers and Koreans.”
More than 200 MPs and Korean National Police swarmed into the area and struggled to separate the combatants. McWhorter ordered the village put off limits and the MPs began moving Americans back up Anjong-Ni’s single dusty street.
“We had about 80 men who were moving back toward the gate with a crowd of Koreans following them. The Koreans started throwing rocks and, to break up the crowd and protect the camp, we used tear gas grenades/’ he said.
“Some shots were fired from .45 cal. pistols.
“No one was shot down here. There are rumors that some people were shot but that isn’t true. All the shots were fired into the air to break up the crowds.”
Four bars were extensively damaged. Four days after the riot, young Korean men loafed amidst the wreckage, playing go (Japanese chess), coming alert only when newsmen came in too look at the damage. Then, they hobbled about.
The bar owners are claiming 20 million won ($54,000) damage and the 8th Army Claims Office is accepting claims. If they are legitimate, they will be paid, an Army spokesman said.
The damage does not appear that extensive.
There were no houses damaged. One shop window was broken, apparently by a rock, and the Koreans reportedly were throwing the rocks.
By 11:30 p.m., most of the Americans were out of the village and safely behind concertina wire which had been stretched across the gate. About 10 U.S. dependents were moved out of the village and onto the compound.
“There was one man down here on leave with his wife. We brought them on the base Friday night and moved them out the next day,” McWhorter said.
Saturday, U.S. MPs swept through the village twice in a door-to-door search for other Americans.
“There was a lot of anger out there, a lot of tension. The men who got caught in it went into hiding. They were afraid,” McWhorter said.
One man, a Negro, was caught by villagers as he tried to make his way back to Camp Humphreys Saturday and was beaten. Police rescued him. Another man, who was injured Friday night, was found during a search and was taken back to the post dispensary.
“This man was not involved in the riot. He’s one of my best EOT (equal opportunities and treatment) men, and he definitely was not involved in it.
“We don’t know, yet, exactly who was involved. We’re investigating, but no one has been charged yet. There were many people hurt, but just because a person was hurt doesn’t mean that he was involved in it. Many were simply bystanders.
Anjong-Ni is not an unusual village.
Its single unpaved, pot-holed street is lined with vegetable stores, a hotel — which the manager says soon will boast a miniature golf course and a swimming pool—tailor and shoe shops which hawk the outlandish fashions of the young and souvenir stores which offer everything from peace beads to intricately etched Korean brassware.
The 12 bars which dot “the alley” are by GI bar standards in Korea, plush, but they are like GI gin mills anywhere. Camp Humphreys is Anjong-Ni’s major industry. It is the reason the village was built and the people and the village could not exist without it.
Its future is now shrouded in a cloud which has put the economy of other towns, other people, in jeopardy: racial discrimination.
Duffy’s, where Friday night’s riot began, is a major source of the discrimination, blacks say.
“We have no place here to relax. The bartenders don’t like to serve us, the girls don’t like to sit with us,” they say.
These are the same complaints that other GIs in Japan, the Philippines, in other areas of Asia, have. They are difficult to prove.
In Friday night’s riot, 14 Americans and Koreans were injured and were treated at U.S. military medical facilities. One Korean, a slim man nicknamed “Johnny,” the manager of Duffy’s, was evacuated to the 121st Evac. Hospital in Seoul for treatment of three stab wounds in the abdomen.
In town, people were saying Johnny was dead and a secret funeral had been held for him Monday.
Monday afternoon, Johnny was returned from Seoul and he was driven from the base to his home in a Pacific Stars and Stripes station wagon, one of the few U.S. forces vehicles allowed into the village that day. As we moved through the concertina wire at the gate, people in a crowd glared at us. The crowd had gathered a few moments earlier when base officials decided to allow Korean women through the gate to visit their boy friends.
Then someone recognized Johnny and word that he was not dead spread quickly down the street. In seconds, the hostility vanished and people ran alongside the car, shouting welcome home and smiling for the first time in four days.
As we took him home, Johnny told us about his club and about what happened.
“I was in the club about 9 p.m. and a bunch of black soldiers came in and told everybody to get out. I ran next door to call the police. We’ve had a lot of trouble here before and I knew, there was going to be trouble again.”
“When I got back to the club, I couldn’t get inside because the black soldiers had pushed everybody out. I could hear them tearing up the place. When they left, I followed them to the street. There were a lot of people around and suddenly someone stabbed me. I don’t know who did it. There were too many people around.”
“I don’t know why they did it. Somebody said it was because there was fight between a black soldier and a white soldier at my club early in the evening. That’s not true. There wasn’t any fight before 9 p.m.
We asked point-blank if there was racial discrimination in Duffy’s.
Johnny lowered his head and answered very quietly, “no.”
“Is the service you give whites any different than that you give blacks?”
He ignored the question and waved out the window at a woman who was running beside the car, waving at him.
The manager of another bar gave at least one piece of concrete evidence of discrimination.
“A lot of it has to do with credit. Many of the bars use chit books. When a soldier doesn’t have any money he can use the chits and pay on pay day. We had a bar owners meeting and some of us argued that the chit books are no good. They only cause problems.”
He said other bar owners will extend credit to white soldiers, but not to blacks. He said his bar does not extend credit, to anyone.
Some people in town — and some on base — say that gangsters have been brought into town to keep the blacks out. They say the gangsters are being paid two million won ($5,400) for the job.
“All I know,” an MP said, “is that since Friday a lot of girls have been leaving and a lot of men have been coming in.”
“Those are rumors,” McWhorter said. “We’ve heard that’s being done and are investigating, but so far we haven’t confirmed it.”
The riot at Anjong-Ni Friday night has served one purpose: It has brought the black soldiers and white soldiers a little closer together.
Monday, when GIs were allowed to go back into the village with an MP escort to pick up their belongings, blacks were not allowed to go.
“No sweat, man,” white GIs said time and again, “I’ll get your stuff for you.”
Anjong-Ni’s bars now are faced with a choice: Either clean up their town and end discrimination or go broke.
“The village will stay off limits indefinitely,” McWhorter said. “It will be off limits until each man who goes out the gate receives the same treatment as the next man.” [Popular Gusts]
I highly recommend reading the whole Popular Gusts article which begins with Part 1 at this link and Part 2 at this link. The comments section above Part 2 is especially informative since servicemembers who were in Korea during this time frame provided further context of what happened. What appears to have happened is that a group of black servicemembers decided to riot in protest of the segregation of the clubs and general discrimination against them in the Anjeong-ri ville. During the riot one of the popular club managers named “Johnny” was stabbed and evacuated to the 121 Hospital on Yongsan Garrison. It is interesting that Johnny and other Koreans that were injured were treated at the military hospital at the time because such a thing would not happen today.
Korea Times article from 1971
However, rumors spread that Johnny had died which caused anger with the Koreans in the Anjeong-ri ville. The Koreans started to hunt down servicemembers in the ville which caused many to go in hiding and wait evacuation, some by helicopter to escape the vigilantes. Despite the vigilantism there was no such incident as a black GI ever being hanged. It seems like this was just a rumor that spread just like the one saying Johnny had died. Fortunately no one did die from this riot in Anjeong-ri, but it shows that Camp Humphreys and Anjeong-ri have had historically a love-hate relationship at times. Some recent example are the Braveheart style battles that occurred in 2005 over the Camp Humphreys expansion and the nasty fight over off limits club bans in 2006.
Seek psychiatric help, Camp Humphreys commander!” is the message on this sign protesting Col. Michael J. Taliento Jr. and his policies concerning access to some off-base establishments in 2006. T.D. Flack / S&SProtesters combat riot police outside of Camp Humphreys in 2005.
Back in 1971 the protests did spread to other bases in Korea such as in the TDC ville outside of Camp Casey which saw only two people injured. However as the above Korea Times article shows three black GIs attacked and stabbed a white GI to death in Busan. It is incidents like this that show how far the Army has come since 1971 and hopefully we never seen anything like this ever happen again.
Note:You can read more GI Flashbacks articles by clicking on the below link:
In my bar-running experiences in front of military bases, all the black people I dealt with on a regular basis were just people with black skin… no different than the white, brown, and yellow-skinned ones that came in.
However, there were posses of semi-feral blacks lurking around on occasion… which the military did not seem to have the will to do anything more than pretending to paperwork the ghetto out of them.
One of the behaviors these groups would exhibit was straight out of a retail loss-prevention textbook.
The group of 4-6 people would break up as soon as coming in the door. There would be a lookout and the rest would walk through the crowd looking for things to steal… digital cameras, camcorders, backpacks, a bag of CDs. I watched it happen several times each year and alerted the regulars as to what was going on as soon as I saw the take… a quick, unnatural body movement or a slick arm maneuver near a crowded table.
The regulars then blocked the door and surrounded the offender(s).
Raycissst? Profiling? I don’t give a funk. There were never any problems with theft except with these semi-pro teams of ghetto blacks.
The story was always the same.
“Yo man, I thought dat be my camera dat I lef’ when I wuz here befor’.”
“I thought dis be my girlfriend’s purse. Daaammm I gots da wrong purse?”
“My friend told me to come git his camcorder. I thought he wuz tallkin’ ’bout dis one.”
The regulars would call bullshyt… but it was like talking to Tbone… lots of shucking and jiving with no content. Calling SPs/MPs or beating their asses would have been more trouble than letting them go… which is how society has structured itself… punishing vigilance, rewarding/ignoring misbehavior.
Word got out quickly to go rip off the other clubs so was never on the regular circuit… though I comforted a lot of teary-eyed girls/guys who lost their purse/camera/camcorder/etc. at the last club.
Soooo… I can certainly see why Mr. Kim/Park/Lee didn’t want a big shrewdness of 70s jive turkeys coming in… especially as they all carried knives… and were known to use them easily.
Tearing the place up back in ’71 was an example, not the reason.
The real question is why didn’t some Korean make a black club… I would have done that in a heartbeat… as every soldier’s money is green.
I would look for a group of blacks, find the alpha male, and tell him I was thinking of making a club for blacks… get his ideas, have him recommend a couple squared-away hard black sons-of-biitches who can hang around and keep order for free drinks, and then treat everyone respectfully (expecting it return), and treat the alphas like the spoiled tribal princes they are trying to be.
Easy.
guitard
8 years ago
“The real question is why didn’t some Korean make a black club…”
Up in TDC there was an alley off the main drag called “Black Row.” At least, that’s what the white GIs called it.
@Chickenhead, reading through comments on Popular Gusts servicemembers at the time say there was a black club in Anjeong-ri at the time time. However, it was the only club and the rioters were going after other clubs that would not let them in because they were black. Considering it was 1971 I can imagine the racism at the time was pretty bad. Does not excuse starting a riot and murdering someone though like what happened with the servicemember stabbed in Busan.
TagumCityTim
8 years ago
When I was stationed at Zoekler Station on Camp Humphreys from 1983-1985 and again from 1988-1990, the UN Club was the place just outside the walk-through gate where the brothers went to be amongst other brothers. I never ventured inside because as one of my black friends told me, “Just stay away if you don’t want any hassle.” Not to say that I would not be welcomed but just to make sure I didn’t wander into anything unnecessarily. However, by the 80’s the stigma of blacks being in the rest of the clubs in Anjong-ni wasn’t as prevalent as it apparently was in the 70’s.
Just so that we are clear on my position, I was in the Navy and had to put up with Army discrimination as we were a group of 120 at full strength versus thousands of Army types in addition to worrying about where the brothers did or did not want you to be. Although we had our own watering hole, the Casbah on the main drag that went into Army hands after the closure of our unit in 1993.
Hot Stuff
8 years ago
I was stationed at the Hump in ’87-’89. There were plenty of “black” clubs, although blacks were welcome to go to any club they wanted to go to…although most chose to stick with others of their own race. I think this was more cultural than racial. R&B vs. Rock and Roll.
My Korean girlfriend at the time didn’t like black men, she told me, because they were lewd and aggressive. She couldn’t walk down the street around any black men without hearing “hey baby, com’on over here”, “looking good sweet thang”, and “I’d like to get some of that…”.
Nancy Fisher
4 years ago
I just found this site. I was one of the few American wives there, and I was given permission to get into Camp Humphreys while my husband was stationed there for 13 months. We lived just outside of the main gate and were there when the riots began. I was 7 months pregnant and we had our little one year old son with us. The landlord locked our gate to the compound where we had a room and, there was another American couple, husband and wife, who had a room there also. The husbands watched the Koreans storming the main gates to the Camp and then the MP’s would chase them back with shots in the air. We wound up getting tear gassed when it finally reached a point where another step was needed to discharge the situation. This night seemed to be a culmination of tensions that had started with a lot of anger by a particular segment of the black community from what we heard. They had stolen some explosives and booby trapped a helicopter door that resulted in a guard losing/damaging an arm. The next incident was another explosive set at the Korean National Police shack right outside of the main gate to the Camp. Our compound was maybe 50 to 60 feet away so we felt and heard the explosion just after we had gone to bed. I don’t know that there were any injuries from the incident, but it certainly raised the tensions. Then the rioting at the bars which reminded me of the riots in DC after Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed.
We were evacuated from our compound and put in a large room above the library (or something of that sort.) All wives of American GI’s and the spouses were crammed in with the cots right next to each other. We were escorted out to the ville once to get what we could carry. It was extremely hot, and the monsoons began and set a new 75 year record and we only had a couple of large fans to cool this large room. To add to the tensions, there were threats to harm the wives, so there were fears, and those in charge finally came up with a resolution of what to do with us after about 5 to 6 days. The American wives were told we were not there officially since it was an unescorted TOD, so we had to figure out how to get out of the Camp. Any Korean wives who had married in country were given military flights out if they wanted to go to the states. We were able to make 1 monitored phone call (the old system with the help of the dear HAM operators) but we could not say what had occurred to necessitate our early departure,
To make it more difficult, I was now 7 weeks away from my due date, and I needed to get out of country quickly since the airline at that time said women were not to fly that close to the delivery date. To shorten this, a kind Chaplin lent us the ticket money until we could get our funds from the bank, and I lied about my due date. During all of this, we received a lot of kind help from our military who brought Pampers for my son and some comfort items such as a couple of toys and food we couldn’t get.
Dominic Gilliam
4 years ago
The editor is missing one racial skirmish with lasted approx. 10 days in 1975 between Koreans and Black soldier resulting in Anjung-ri being shutdown. I was with B Co 728th Mp Bn. The main contention began with an unknown dispute between a local Korean who went by the name of “Bozo” (I knew him well) and Black soldiers from the 802nd Engineer Bn.
I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT IN THE 3 YEARS SINCE I WAS AT CAMP HUMPHREYS. ARRIVED END OF 1966 AND LEFT MID 1968. YES MORE THAN 13 MONTHS THANKS TO AN INDEFINITE EXTENSION DUE TO THE NAVE LOSING THE US SHIP PUEBLO. THINGS DETERIORATED SO BAD. MY UNIT WAS B CO. 55TH MAINT BN. AVIATION. TO&E FOR 350 MEMBERS AND WE HAD A WHOPPING 82 MEMBERS. THAT INCLUDED THE C.O. 1ST. LT. AND THE X.O. 2ND LT.
THERE WAS ONE BLACK CLUB JUST OUSIDE THE GATE ON THE LEFT DOWN AN ALLEY. THE OTHER 3 OR 4 CLUBS WERE PATRONIZED USUALLY BY MEMBERS OF THE FEW UNITS THAT WERE THERE. 55TH MAINT BN AVIATION. ME. 35TH SIGNAL GROUP AND THE LARGEST WAS THE 802ND ENGINEER BN. THEY HAD THEIR OWN IN HOUSE RIOT SQUAD THAT MORE THAN ONCE HAD TO BAIL OUT THE MP’S AT THE ENLISTED CLUB. I NEVER SAW ANY RACISM UNTIL WE HAD A VIETNAM REDIRECT DUDE FROM ALABAMA COME IN. HE WAS QUICKLY PUT IN HIS PLACE.
THE OTHER CLUBS I REMEMBER WERE DUFFY’S AS MENTIONED AND THE TOP HAT CLUB. IN CLEANING OUT SOME MEMORABILIA A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I FOUND A PRISTINE “VD INSPECTION CARD” THAT WAS ISSUED FOR THE TOP HAT CLUB. IN 1967 ATA ABOUT 7PM SEVERAL DEUCE AND A HALFS WOULD TRUCK WOMEN FROM THE MAIN GATETO THE CLUBS.
In my bar-running experiences in front of military bases, all the black people I dealt with on a regular basis were just people with black skin… no different than the white, brown, and yellow-skinned ones that came in.
However, there were posses of semi-feral blacks lurking around on occasion… which the military did not seem to have the will to do anything more than pretending to paperwork the ghetto out of them.
One of the behaviors these groups would exhibit was straight out of a retail loss-prevention textbook.
The group of 4-6 people would break up as soon as coming in the door. There would be a lookout and the rest would walk through the crowd looking for things to steal… digital cameras, camcorders, backpacks, a bag of CDs. I watched it happen several times each year and alerted the regulars as to what was going on as soon as I saw the take… a quick, unnatural body movement or a slick arm maneuver near a crowded table.
The regulars then blocked the door and surrounded the offender(s).
Raycissst? Profiling? I don’t give a funk. There were never any problems with theft except with these semi-pro teams of ghetto blacks.
The story was always the same.
“Yo man, I thought dat be my camera dat I lef’ when I wuz here befor’.”
“I thought dis be my girlfriend’s purse. Daaammm I gots da wrong purse?”
“My friend told me to come git his camcorder. I thought he wuz tallkin’ ’bout dis one.”
The regulars would call bullshyt… but it was like talking to Tbone… lots of shucking and jiving with no content. Calling SPs/MPs or beating their asses would have been more trouble than letting them go… which is how society has structured itself… punishing vigilance, rewarding/ignoring misbehavior.
Word got out quickly to go rip off the other clubs so was never on the regular circuit… though I comforted a lot of teary-eyed girls/guys who lost their purse/camera/camcorder/etc. at the last club.
Soooo… I can certainly see why Mr. Kim/Park/Lee didn’t want a big shrewdness of 70s jive turkeys coming in… especially as they all carried knives… and were known to use them easily.
Tearing the place up back in ’71 was an example, not the reason.
The real question is why didn’t some Korean make a black club… I would have done that in a heartbeat… as every soldier’s money is green.
I would look for a group of blacks, find the alpha male, and tell him I was thinking of making a club for blacks… get his ideas, have him recommend a couple squared-away hard black sons-of-biitches who can hang around and keep order for free drinks, and then treat everyone respectfully (expecting it return), and treat the alphas like the spoiled tribal princes they are trying to be.
Easy.
“The real question is why didn’t some Korean make a black club…”
Up in TDC there was an alley off the main drag called “Black Row.” At least, that’s what the white GIs called it.
@Chickenhead, reading through comments on Popular Gusts servicemembers at the time say there was a black club in Anjeong-ri at the time time. However, it was the only club and the rioters were going after other clubs that would not let them in because they were black. Considering it was 1971 I can imagine the racism at the time was pretty bad. Does not excuse starting a riot and murdering someone though like what happened with the servicemember stabbed in Busan.
When I was stationed at Zoekler Station on Camp Humphreys from 1983-1985 and again from 1988-1990, the UN Club was the place just outside the walk-through gate where the brothers went to be amongst other brothers. I never ventured inside because as one of my black friends told me, “Just stay away if you don’t want any hassle.” Not to say that I would not be welcomed but just to make sure I didn’t wander into anything unnecessarily. However, by the 80’s the stigma of blacks being in the rest of the clubs in Anjong-ni wasn’t as prevalent as it apparently was in the 70’s.
Just so that we are clear on my position, I was in the Navy and had to put up with Army discrimination as we were a group of 120 at full strength versus thousands of Army types in addition to worrying about where the brothers did or did not want you to be. Although we had our own watering hole, the Casbah on the main drag that went into Army hands after the closure of our unit in 1993.
I was stationed at the Hump in ’87-’89. There were plenty of “black” clubs, although blacks were welcome to go to any club they wanted to go to…although most chose to stick with others of their own race. I think this was more cultural than racial. R&B vs. Rock and Roll.
My Korean girlfriend at the time didn’t like black men, she told me, because they were lewd and aggressive. She couldn’t walk down the street around any black men without hearing “hey baby, com’on over here”, “looking good sweet thang”, and “I’d like to get some of that…”.
I just found this site. I was one of the few American wives there, and I was given permission to get into Camp Humphreys while my husband was stationed there for 13 months. We lived just outside of the main gate and were there when the riots began. I was 7 months pregnant and we had our little one year old son with us. The landlord locked our gate to the compound where we had a room and, there was another American couple, husband and wife, who had a room there also. The husbands watched the Koreans storming the main gates to the Camp and then the MP’s would chase them back with shots in the air. We wound up getting tear gassed when it finally reached a point where another step was needed to discharge the situation. This night seemed to be a culmination of tensions that had started with a lot of anger by a particular segment of the black community from what we heard. They had stolen some explosives and booby trapped a helicopter door that resulted in a guard losing/damaging an arm. The next incident was another explosive set at the Korean National Police shack right outside of the main gate to the Camp. Our compound was maybe 50 to 60 feet away so we felt and heard the explosion just after we had gone to bed. I don’t know that there were any injuries from the incident, but it certainly raised the tensions. Then the rioting at the bars which reminded me of the riots in DC after Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed.
We were evacuated from our compound and put in a large room above the library (or something of that sort.) All wives of American GI’s and the spouses were crammed in with the cots right next to each other. We were escorted out to the ville once to get what we could carry. It was extremely hot, and the monsoons began and set a new 75 year record and we only had a couple of large fans to cool this large room. To add to the tensions, there were threats to harm the wives, so there were fears, and those in charge finally came up with a resolution of what to do with us after about 5 to 6 days. The American wives were told we were not there officially since it was an unescorted TOD, so we had to figure out how to get out of the Camp. Any Korean wives who had married in country were given military flights out if they wanted to go to the states. We were able to make 1 monitored phone call (the old system with the help of the dear HAM operators) but we could not say what had occurred to necessitate our early departure,
To make it more difficult, I was now 7 weeks away from my due date, and I needed to get out of country quickly since the airline at that time said women were not to fly that close to the delivery date. To shorten this, a kind Chaplin lent us the ticket money until we could get our funds from the bank, and I lied about my due date. During all of this, we received a lot of kind help from our military who brought Pampers for my son and some comfort items such as a couple of toys and food we couldn’t get.
The editor is missing one racial skirmish with lasted approx. 10 days in 1975 between Koreans and Black soldier resulting in Anjung-ri being shutdown. I was with B Co 728th Mp Bn. The main contention began with an unknown dispute between a local Korean who went by the name of “Bozo” (I knew him well) and Black soldiers from the 802nd Engineer Bn.
I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT IN THE 3 YEARS SINCE I WAS AT CAMP HUMPHREYS. ARRIVED END OF 1966 AND LEFT MID 1968. YES MORE THAN 13 MONTHS THANKS TO AN INDEFINITE EXTENSION DUE TO THE NAVE LOSING THE US SHIP PUEBLO. THINGS DETERIORATED SO BAD. MY UNIT WAS B CO. 55TH MAINT BN. AVIATION. TO&E FOR 350 MEMBERS AND WE HAD A WHOPPING 82 MEMBERS. THAT INCLUDED THE C.O. 1ST. LT. AND THE X.O. 2ND LT.
THERE WAS ONE BLACK CLUB JUST OUSIDE THE GATE ON THE LEFT DOWN AN ALLEY. THE OTHER 3 OR 4 CLUBS WERE PATRONIZED USUALLY BY MEMBERS OF THE FEW UNITS THAT WERE THERE. 55TH MAINT BN AVIATION. ME. 35TH SIGNAL GROUP AND THE LARGEST WAS THE 802ND ENGINEER BN. THEY HAD THEIR OWN IN HOUSE RIOT SQUAD THAT MORE THAN ONCE HAD TO BAIL OUT THE MP’S AT THE ENLISTED CLUB. I NEVER SAW ANY RACISM UNTIL WE HAD A VIETNAM REDIRECT DUDE FROM ALABAMA COME IN. HE WAS QUICKLY PUT IN HIS PLACE.
THE OTHER CLUBS I REMEMBER WERE DUFFY’S AS MENTIONED AND THE TOP HAT CLUB. IN CLEANING OUT SOME MEMORABILIA A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I FOUND A PRISTINE “VD INSPECTION CARD” THAT WAS ISSUED FOR THE TOP HAT CLUB. IN 1967 ATA ABOUT 7PM SEVERAL DEUCE AND A HALFS WOULD TRUCK WOMEN FROM THE MAIN GATETO THE CLUBS.
SAD WHAT HAPPENED SINCE 1968 TO MY BELOVED K-6.